AMD Radeon RX 9070 Review

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 enters the graphics card market at an interesting juncture. Hot on the heels of Nvidia's latest generation, this $549 card directly competes with the underwhelming GeForce RTX 5070. In this matchup, AMD emerges victorious, making the RX 9070 a compelling choice for 1440p gaming.

However, the situation isn't entirely straightforward. AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 XT, only $50 more expensive, presents a tough competitor. While the price difference aligns with the 9070's roughly 8% lower performance, the extra $50 buys a noticeable performance upgrade, making the decision difficult. Nevertheless, the internal competition within AMD's lineup still paints a positive picture for Team Red.

Purchasing Guide

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 launches March 6th, with a starting price of $549. Expect variations in pricing across different models. Prioritize purchasing a card as close to the starting price as possible, especially given its proximity in price to the superior RX 9070 XT.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 – Photos

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Specs and Features

Like its sibling, the RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070 utilizes the new RDNA 4 architecture. This results in a substantial performance leap, significantly outperforming the previous generation Radeon RX 7900 GRE despite possessing 30% fewer compute units.

The RX 9070 boasts 56 Compute Units, each containing 64 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), totaling 3,584 shaders. Each compute unit includes one Ray Accelerator and two AI Accelerators, amounting to 56 and 112 respectively. These improvements, particularly to the Ray and AI Accelerators, finally enable the card to compete effectively in ray-traced games. Furthermore, the enhanced AI Accelerators facilitate the introduction of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, bringing AI upscaling to AMD GPUs for the first time.

The RX 9070 features 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 256-bit bus, mirroring the 7900 GRE's configuration and providing ample memory for 1440p gaming for years to come. While GDDR7 adoption would have been beneficial, it likely would have increased the cost.

AMD recommends a 550W power supply, with a card power budget of 220W. Testing revealed peak consumption at 249W, slightly exceeding the budget. A 600W PSU is recommended for a safety margin.

Importantly, unlike previous generations, AMD isn't releasing a reference design for the RX 9070. All versions will be from third-party manufacturers. This review utilizes the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC 16G, a triple-slot card with a factory overclock.

FSR 4

Since DLSS's emergence, AI upscaling has become a crucial performance enhancer. Previously an Nvidia-exclusive advantage, FSR 4 now brings this capability to AMD GPUs.

FSR 4 uses previous frames and in-game data, processed through an AI model, to upscale lower-resolution images to the native resolution. This differs from FSR 3's temporal upscaling, which lacked an AI algorithm for detail refinement, resulting in artifacts.

The AI processing introduces a minor performance penalty compared to FSR 3. For example, in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at 1440p (Extreme preset), FSR 3 yielded 165 fps, dropping to 159 fps with FSR 4. Similar results were observed in Monster Hunter World.

The Adrenalin software allows toggling between FSR 3 and FSR 4, allowing users to prioritize image quality or performance based on their preferences.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 – Benchmarks

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Performance

At $549, the RX 9070 directly challenges the RTX 5070, consistently outperforming it. At 1440p, it's on average 12% faster and 22% faster than the RX 7900 GRE. This is a significant improvement, especially considering the 30% reduction in cores.

The review unit was a factory-overclocked version with a reported boost clock of 2700MHz (approximately a 7% increase). This contributes to the performance advantage, although not proportionally.

Testing utilized public drivers (Nvidia Game Ready driver 572.60 and AMD Adrenalin 24.12.1, with review drivers for the RX 9070, RX 9070 XT, and RTX 5070).

3DMark benchmarks showed near parity with the RTX 5070 in ray-traced tests, but a significant 20% lead in non-ray-traced tests.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 showed a 26% lead over the RTX 5070 and a 15% lead over the 7900 GRE at 1440p with FSR 3. Cyberpunk 2077 (ray tracing Ultra) showed a small but significant 3% advantage. Metro Exodus (raw ray tracing performance) showed an 11% lead. Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan) showed a 23% lead. Total War: Warhammer 3 showed a close contest at 1440p, with a larger lead at 4K. Assassin's Creed Mirage showed an 18% lead. Black Myth Wukong resulted in a near tie. Forza Horizon 5 showed a 12% lead over the RTX 5070 and a 25% lead over the 7900 GRE.

The RX 9070's superior performance and 33% more VRAM than the RTX 5070 make it the more compelling value proposition, even if performance were perfectly matched.

The Radeon RX 9070's strong performance relative to the RTX 5070 at the same price point is impressive. Its larger VRAM capacity also ensures better longevity.